Time of Your Life
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: Three snapshots of Ahsoka Tano. AU and canon-compliant; two gen, one Ahsoka/Barriss.


**A/n:** These were written for that old meme in which you write ficlets for the duration of whatever song you're listening to. I cheated and played the songs several times, but the intentions are the same.

* * *

_Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) –Green Day_

"You don't need to do this," says Anakin. Part of him looks furious, and part looks hurt, and that makes Ahsoka feel guilty, although she's already made up her mind. He's changed since she's known him, but he's always had the worst habit of forming attachments, to people, planets –even to machines; she's astonished Artoo isn't here. It's one of the traits that he had when she met him, and which she can still clearly see today.

(That, and his eyes are still blue. That reassures her, and she isn't sure why.)

"Yes I do. I'm sorry…" _Master, _she almost says, but it's no longer appropriate. "Skyguy," she says instead, although it's a childish nickname, and she hasn't used for a year, maybe more. "I can't be a Jedi anymore. This isn't the right path for me."

"How can you know that?" Now she sees the rage in him, the anger that seems to get closer and closer to his surface as the war heats up around them. Before she just passed it off as his temper –she had one too, after all; perfectly normal. These days, it's starting to scare her.

"It's not right. I feel… I feel that things are going to start to happen, and I don't want to be involved with them. Whatever they are." She looks at him for the last time, fusses with the bag that carries her few possessions.

"You were happy," he presses. "In the Temple. Out fighting. Being diplomatic."

"I was. I'm not leaving because I hated it here. I'm leaving because… because I have to." Ahsoka turns away, begins walking towards her ship, knowing that if she stops and looks back, she'll never leave here, not until it's too late. "Goodbye, Anakin."

(In all of their conversations about this, she's never told him the real reason why she's leaving.)

* * *

_Mrs. Mcgrath –Bruce Springsteen_

Ahsoka has a picture that she drew on flimsiplast when she was young.

On it is a Togruta woman, tall and proud. She's smiling. Her headtails are long and fat, montrails thick and blunt. Her skin is scribbled in an orange-red color, all except the few small stripes on her face, poorly done, but obviously the traditional face markings.

Looped over the montrails is what looks like a small, "v" shaped necklace. Tiny dots mark its easy slope, and a round, green circle inside a wavy background hangs at its lowest point.

Sometimes Ahsoka takes it out and looks at it, and tries to jog her memories.

When the crèche master saw it, he asked, "Is that you, little one?"

"No!" she had replied, the indignities of a misunderstood child prominent in her voice. "It's my mother."

Sometimes when Ahsoka is lonely, she'll play with the headdress she always wears and wonder how old the woman she only recalls by a sloppy youngling's drawing was when she earned it.

* * *

_I'll Make a Man out of You –Donny Osmond_

It's dark in the salle, and they aren't supposed to be here, but Ahsoka managed to tempt Barriss into coming to the salle anyway, where their meeting would be unobserved

It's the first time they've dueled with her wielding both the shoto and the saber. Ahsoka steps back and angles her blades. This one's going to be interesting, she thinks, watching through narrowed eyes.

Barriss skirts around her, single saber cocked. She doesn't attack first, Ahsoka knows –that's not her style.

So naturally, she leaps in, ducking around Barriss' blade, striking upwards with the shoto, and deflecting Barriss' rebuke with her regular lightsaber. Her opponent narrowly avoids the searing heat.

Barriss dances back. "Not bad."

Ahsoka grins.

Then Barriss strikes. Out of reach of the shoto, she deflects Ahsoka with a two-handed grip and strikes in-between her blades, marking her arm with a small but painful burn.

It really begins then, the first mark setting off an intense, acrobatic frenzy of sabers and strikes. Ahsoka's two blades offer her some advantage, but it's at odds with her inexperience, and Barriss –though she has a harder time deflecting both blades- has the privilege of being able to strike out with her fists when she chooses to have a one-handed hold on her saber.

It ends with no clear winner, only when Barriss, getting as tired as Ahsoka, calls out, "Draw?" The words echo through the salle, the only sound other than their harsh breaths and spitting lightsabers.

"Draw," she agrees, and they click off their swords at the same time.

The only light in the arena is what violet rays streams in from the skylights high above them; the only sound, their slowing pants as they catch their breaths. No one else is in the salle to reprimand Ahsoka as she carelessly lets her sabers fall to the ground, more important things on her mind.

When she kisses Barriss she can taste the sweat on her skin, and then their next midnight dance begins.


End file.
